the core
by jarofclay42
Summary: [AoKuro, cyborg!fic] The first time cyborg Aomine Daiki sees apparently regular boy Kuroko Tetsuya, they try to kill each other. From then, it is a rollercoaster between untrusting collegues trying to get the job done, a redheaded cyborg with his own mission to accomplish, and the hints of how shady the System Aomine works for has been lately.


**Aka, the cyborg story about Aomine's constant denial and Kuroko's natural interest in damaged goods.**

**This is the result of giving me a porn battle and a prompt: the vague illusion of a plot, and almost no porn at all. I'm sorry. **  
**Or maybe I'm not, I don't know. I really enjoy cyborg fics.**  
**Not posting it as a pornbattle entry because of the length :C**  
**Alsooo, a big thank youuu to _Lys ap Adin_ who was merciful and accepted to beta it when I panicked because I hadn't a beta lol.**

* * *

**the core**

The first time he sees the boy, Daiki tries to kill him.

He stands on the dock, absorbed by the calm sight of the sea waves lapping against the worn away wood, shorts and shirt fluttering in the wind and showing pale skin covering his thin bones; and Daiki stops, a dozen feet away, an uncommon sense of discomfort silently gnawing at what is left of his conscience.

"Satsuki," he cautiously speaks in the earpiece, "he's just a boy."

"What?" he hears the confused voice of his friend crackling in his ear, "No no no, that's impossible, the file clearly states he's about the same—"

The boy is turning his head towards him, slowly, a pair of wide, light-blue eyes noticing him and then, inevitably, falling on his cybernetic arm that shines threateningly in the pale sunlight that breaks through the cloud-bank.

The next second, he disappears from Daiki's sight.

"What the fuck," Daiki says in shock, and he catches almost too late the blurry movement out of the corner of his eye. He ducks by instinct, before even knowing what the guy is aiming at his shoulder—a knife.

A very sharp, mid-length kitchen knife.

'Seriously?' Daiki wonders, slightly moved by the stark simplicity of the weapon. Who the fuck brings one with them out of their house, anyway.

He activates his arm and it rapidly disassembles into a three-MP40 and Air gun setting, since there is no one on the docks to complain about the noise.

"Guess he isn't just a boy, after all," he tells Satsuki while trying to figure out where the target went. "He didn't look that surprised to see us. He also throws low knives pretty well."

He catches a glimpse of a mop of pale blue hair almost disappearing behind one of the infinite blocks of rusty containers lined up all over the docks area, and he takes a chance with one Air gun shot.

"Of course he isn't," Satsuki retorts, ignoring his string of curses at the miss, "why would they order us to kill a regular boy?" But even as she says it, Daiki can hear the vague doubt in her voice, ever wondering.

"They've given us shittier missions in the past, and you know it," he reminds her bitterly.

He runs into the metal labyrinth of containers, his eyes scanning the place, in vain.

He sighs in annoyance, not really the type to enjoy the chasing; but he doesn't blame the guy, who at least seems wiser than a lot of people Daiki has come across to in his fucked-up life. He only _had_ a knife, and Daiki has a cybernetic arm and leg implanted in his body and heavy with weaponry that impatiently waits to be unleashed.

Still, he can't shrug off the fleeting feeling that something is very wrong in this whole situation.

But he's not the best man of his division for nothing.

"Do you see him?" Satsuki asks.

"Shut up one sec," he says, and Satsuki doesn't complain about the harsh tone, probably only because she knows what he's about to do.

So he closes his eyes and lets his left ear search for the sharp intake of a breath, the regular tapping of shoes on the uneven asphalt, the frantic pumping of a heart.

In the silence of the container yard, once he's found one beat, he finds them all. Promptly, his mechanical leg stretches out in a jump that sets him down on the roof of the nearest container, cracking the metal surface with a dreadful thump.

The boy is not fast enough to lose him. With five more jumps he lands back on the floor, falling right in front of the boy's frowning face. Daiki grins at him in smug satisfaction, and before he can pull off his disappearing act again, he grabs him by the throat and slams him hard on the wall.

"Running away from me isn't enough to beat me." He grimaces, annoyed – he isn't sure at what; whether at the boy who tried to escape and not stayed put to let himself be killed swiftly, or at the boy not being able to escape at all. He could have tried harder, at least. And instead, there he is, unsettling Daiki with his unfathomable, unexpressive gaze and a calmness that makes him lax in Daiki's tight hold. For the sake of his fragile sanity, Daiki diverts his thoughts. "I guess I'm sorry," he says, as he raises his left arm and places the short cane of one of his MP40s right on the boy's heart.

He almost doesn't see the thin arm reaching out for his cyborg hand, but when he realizes it, it's too late: the moment the apparently harmless palm touches it, a split second of scorching pain racks every nerve in his shoulder and back, and he can't breathe.

He crumbles on his knees, the teary yelling of Satsuki in his ear giving him a sudden headache. When he finally manages to reopen his eyes, and forces a gulp of air down in his burning lungs, he reaches for the earbud and turns it off. Only then he looks up at the boy, his little height strangely menacing as he looms over him, without a single weapon but an invisible one.

"What do you want," the boy asks, the whisper rolling off icily from his barely moving lips.

"Huh," Daiki stumbles, bewildered, "kill you?"

"Who _sent_ you?" the other tries again, this time moving his right hand towards him.

"Fuck if I tell you," he snorts, glancing challengingly at him. With some strain, he draws his mechanical leg to rest on his foot, casually pointing his kneecap at the boy's stomach, and readies himself to fire with his Burst gun at the first wrong movement of the boy. He could do it now, Daiki thinks, open a hole in the other's stomach and get over with it; but for some reasons he doesn't want to acknowledge, he decides to wait.

But the boy doesn't move closer. He sighs, his shoulders visibly rocking with it, and he takes a wary step back. Then another, and another again, until he turns around and walks away, vanishing behind a corner.

Daiki is too dumbfounded to even think about shooting at his retreating back.

Once he switches his earpiece back on, Satsuki is still yelling.

"Don't you dare take it off again, Daiki! Don't you _dare_! Where's he? What happened?"

Daiki stands up, expecting a rebound of that thing's power. But nothing happens.

"Fuck if I know," he tells her, sincere.

(...)

The second time, he is commanded to get back to his unfinished job.

He can't stand the way Imayoshi phrases it, as if his failures have now become a daily recurrence. Which they have _not_, far from it, and Daiki knows Imayoshi knows it too. But his boss seems to enjoy twisting the knife in the wound, always testing his patience.

If it were up to him, Daiki would have already raised a ruckus about it, complaining about the massive disinformation, the low-ranked missions. And everyone would have given him what he wanted, because no one in Touou really denies the best fighter in the division what he wants to bring a mission to an end. But after the big bust with the rebels' business a few months before, he constantly walks on thin ice, and the most annoying woman on the planet has made a point in her life to pound into him some sense of self-preservation.

'Lie low for a bit, Daiki,' Satsuki tells him every time he's on the verge of exploding, 'the higher ups have their eye on you since that mission. They don't trust you anymore, and the reason you're still alive is because you're damn good at what you do, and they don't like getting rid of good weaponry so hastily. But if you give them one reason for believing that you're getting soft-hearted and don't have their best interests at heart… they're not letting you get out of this alive.'

'I'm not soft-hearted,' he usually answers, purposely ignoring the relevant part.

At this point, Satsuki smiles at him, and he resists the urge to slap her, because what the fuck does that smile even mean. 'No, you're not,' she says humbly, 'so please, do everything they tell you to do. Don't let them doubt you, even if they may be right to do so.'

And, for once, even if reluctantly, he really listened to Satsuki's advice, and didn't do anything out of bounds, kept his profile low and dutiful for longer than he's ever managed.

But this time, he has the feeling something's off with this new mission, as if the weird boy, his unexplainable hand, aren't really what the System wants them to seem. He feels so awkward about it all to the point where he is almost ready to do something really stupid in order to unravel the mystery; but he obviously isn't stupid _enough_ to voice his feelings to anyone, with his boss watching him as if he is a ticking bomb ready to explode at any minute, threatening to impair the perfection of the System.

"At least you could have told me a_ little_ more," Daiki complains noisily, sprawled unceremoniously on the couch. He tries not look around, hating every centimeter of the too pristine office he's in. "Like, who the fuck is this guy? You didn't even give me a name, for crying out loud."

Imayoshi, comfortably sit behind his desk, takes the ceramic cup of piping coffee from the domestic robot's hands and sighs dispassionately.

"I'm afraid there's nothing more to say, except that he's your target and you have to eliminate him. Which, I feel the need to point out, you didn't, and it was a _very_ low-ranked mission. Besides, it's not like you need his name to put a bullet in his head." Imayoshi takes a sip, and closes his eyes for a moment. "Ah, where did the days you didn't question anything go? Don't you trust us anymore?"

No, Daiki thinks, he doesn't, because Imayoshi is the omniscient type of guy, and Daiki doesn't believe for one second he doesn't know something more about this.

At his stern look, Imayoshi gives another sigh, with excessive exasperation. "I told you, this order comes from Rakuzan, and I don't know much," he asserts firmly. "They only gave me the file with his photo and useless description, and made it clear that he's not that much of a threat but they'd prefer to get rid of him as soon as possible, before he can become one. Something about him possibly being a sneak for the rebels, or a rebel himself. They expressly asked for our best man, and I grieve daily over the fact that it means _you_."

"And how do you explain the thing he does with his hand?" Daiki asks. "Once you know it's there, it isn't that hard to work around it, but still, a man wonders."

"A hidden device of some kind, I'd say," Imayoshi speculates. "Maybe stolen. But if it was something serious, they would have told you for sure."

"And if it's such a low-ranked mission," Daiki says, unabashed, "why send the best man?"

Imayoshi skims through the stacks of files scattered in front of him, already not listening anymore, or pretending not to.

"Who knows, Agent Aomine. Now go back to work as soon as the research group manages to locate your target, and please, don't fail this time. We would all be very disappointed."

Se here he is again, running towards the boy, except, this time the boy is carrying two Mauser C96s and Satsuki is beside him, reloading his hand guns with perfected ease.

The chase drags on for a while through the streets and blocks in the outskirts of the city, the elusive boy always one little step ahead of him as he runs away, shooting over his shoulder and jumping down open windows as if he did this every day. But Daiki easily trails behind him, almost enjoying himself in the run enough to play around a bit, with Satsuki's predictable irritation accompanying him all the while. At some point, he even manages a little chat with him _– 'So, what's your story?' 'Not telling _you_,' the boy bites back, unrelenting, before shooting in his general direction_ –, and he would have sworn he had hit him with a bullet in his forearm, but the boy keeps dodging everything he throws at him.

"How does he even do that," Daiki groans once the boy disappears again, and he looks around in the river of people and domestic robots flowing in the large street his target so wisely struggled to reach.

"Daiki," Satsuki says, and only then Daiki becomes aware of how the girl has kept unusually quiet since the boy had appeared. "He…" she murmurs, "I've rarely seen such a high percentage of cyborg parts in a body, moreover one that small. …Akashi is something like this, but he shows everything. This guy, though... It's a completely different level of technology. And the only people I can think of who could have the kind of knowledge to do something like this… are inside the System."

Daiki stares at her, and after a second of confusion, he opts for a good laugh.

"Satsuki, he can't be." He says it more to himself than her, because if the boy _is_, that would partly explain the right hand, the jumping from places a bit higher than possible for a boy not endowed with mechanical legs, the breaking and handling of objects that would have made a normal hand bleed, the occasional use of weird devices a lot like his own ones in their functioning – he had noticed, but relegated everything on the back of his mind, hoping it didn't mean what it seemed to do.

Because at the same time, it would mean they were getting heavily involved with some serious shit.

But Satsuki's bionic eyes glow unnaturally in the shadows of the alley as she gives him a grim look, and Daiki feels his jaw drop.

(...)

After the third time, Daiki starts wondering if he's losing his touch.

Moreover, from then, despite his efforts Daiki can't stop thinking about the boy and those piercing eyes, his unwavering attitude. His face, his body, so common and painfully _normal_ at first glance.

He doesn't really like runners, but that's because they never manage to get away in the end, only prolonging the inevitable and making him edgy with boredom. But the guy—he can, where hundreds blatantly better equipped failed, and Daiki can't fathom _how_. So he becomes the more distressed.

One day Satsuki hands him the print of the data her eyes had gathered, and he stares speechlessly at the image of the boy's cyborg parts implanted everywhere in his body: his arms, his spine, most of his chest – ribcage, lungs, fucking _everything_ –, the side of his neck and jaw, and a good percentage of his legs. He doesn't know why, but he orders Satsuki to not show the file to anyone in Touou. When he does, Satsuki gives him an austere look that makes him believe she'll launch herself in the second tirade of the day but, after a moment, she shakes her head, pink hair gently swaying with the movement, and quietly complies by ripping the file apart.

After the fourth time, a terrible coalition of Wakamatsu and Imayoshi threaten him to kick him out of the team and throw him back where he came from, because, Wakamatsu yells, there's a limit to how much he can fail; after that, a high-ranked mission for him arrives at Imayoshi's desk. When he returns to the Center covered in blood and Sakurai explains in details how Daiki almost single-handedly annihilated the rebels they had run into, Wakamatsu relents.

That night, Daiki's nightmares merge with far memories, and he dreams of explosions, blood – his blood, and more, more, _more_ – sticking to every surface, dripping from his face and pain, _so much pain_ – cutting, opening, implanting, the promises and lies coming from mismatched eyes, and he wakes up at four a.m. drenched in sweat, with his heart trying to burst out of his ribcage, and his left arm—it is already activating on its own.

The fifth time, the boy brings a friend.

(...)

Daiki realizes he might be feeling too much one-sided familiarity with the boy if the first thing he does as he sees him, standing on the corner of the now deserted street, is wave at him. The boy looks at him perplexedly.

The other one is practically as tall as Daiki, with fiery red hair in such a stark contrast with the dreariness of their surroundings that Daiki would love to laugh in his face. But the resolute look in his eyes and the muscles of his whole body visibly tense in anticipation as he gets off his motorcycle suggest that he's not the type to indulge in pleasantries, and as expected, one second later he jumps two meters high with the ridiculous intent to crash him under his knees, making very clear to Daiki that he's just made a new cyborg acquaintance.

The moment a fire of bullets rips through the trousers, directed at him, he does laughs as he barely dodges them. "Hey," he grins, cocky, "I have those too."

The guy ignores him, trousers ripping in shreds as his shins disassemble into sharp double blades, and he yells at the other, "Kuroko, activate the Deflection Field and just go!"

But Satsuki is on the boy before he can bat an eyelid, pushing him around the corner of the alley.

The guy turns his focus back at him as he switches on his Field attached to the belt, shielding the front of his limbs, chest and head behind a thin, impalpable glass of greenish light.

"Oh, man, do we have to? I fucking hate those," Daiki moans while he activates his own, and wonders where the fuck this one comes from to even own _two_ anti-bullets Fields. But then again, nothing in this situation has made sense from the very start. "They only make every movement harder."

The guy snorts. "That is only if you didn't practice hard enough with them." And he lunges forward.

It is a fiery battle between them, the kind Daiki hasn't had for far too long, and he smiles with an excitement he thought he had lost months before as he thrusts his mechanical blade towards the man's shoulder, craving the feel of blood and victory. Everything becomes a blur. The street, the buildings, even his real target, all are lost on him as he lets himself be caught in the frenzy of it, and delivers hit after hit, dodges, misses, cuts through fresh skin, the only sound being his heartbeat racing madly, and the rush of adrenaline making him faster, stronger, more desperate for the win. When he feels his weapon slashing lightly into the flash, he isn't himself anymore.

But even in the heat of the battle, with the blood pounding in his ears and the sheer rush of excitement, slowly the reality catches up on him: even if the guy shows very promising potential, it is still just _potential_, and Daiki becomes certain that the one who'll get out of this alive will be himself.

He watches with cruel satisfaction as his blade cuts through the Field and damages the device, shutting it down abruptly. Daiki deactivates his own at the same moment, and swiftly shoves the mouths of his arm's three MP40s in the man's side, and aligns his leg to the other's.

"Not enough," he hisses in the petrified face of the man, before opening the fire.

The man's leg blows up in pieces, scattering bolts and splinters of metal around them, as the bullets in his side tear their way open deep in the flesh, rivulets of bloods immediately flowing out along his hip and leg, and Daiki lets the body crumble on the hard asphalt, distancing himself a few feet.

The rush of adrenaline starts wearing down, and finally he can see again where he is, what he's doing, whose all the blood on his shirt is; he almost doesn't recognize the man's wounds as his doing – he doesn't _want_ to, and something inside him suddenly just wants to throw up and leave – but he knows what he must do, or, at least, the adrenaline and the excitement making his head and his senses dizzy with a sense of lost familiarity know, and he already has his Gatling gun aimed and about to shoot the final blow, when a mind-blowing pain racks his shoulder for the shortest of times, and his arm starts steaming.

"You cheating bastard," he groans, "next time I'm gonna rip your fucking hands off." He's on his knees again, exactly like the last time, and he looks up at the boy.

Daiki notices a long, bleeding scratch on the human side of his neck, and he suddenly connects the pieces.

He scans the butchered street searching for Satsuki— and catches a glimpse of pink strands hair lying on the floor, and disappearing behind the corner.

All the ecstasy from the fight immediately gets washed away by a wave of dread, a sudden numbness engulfing his mind.

"Did you…" he growls lowly, struggling to stand up and gulp down the knot in his throat that makes breathing much harder. For the first time, he watches the boy and feels nothing of the sympathy, the frustration nor the fascination that he may have felt before. He watches him and sees him for what he is. And he is an enemy, an evil little _thing_ that needs to be crushed—and he feels so fucking _stupid_, for all the chances he hasn't taken when they were right in front of him, for having brought them all to this point of no return.

So Daiki musters his strength, and points the end of his arm right at the boy's head, as the latter tries to put his barely conscious friend's arm around his shoulders.

The boy looks at him now, his eyes burning with an unprecedented fire, the same Daiki feels devouring every ounce of sanity inside him.

"Of course not," he finally answers. "She's just unconscious."

The words take some time to sink into his barely functioning brain, to break through the fog of numbness and when they do, he doesn't let himself be fooled.

"You're lying," he snarls.

"I'm not. Go check on her," the boy states, his anger and impatience becoming more visible through the apparent coolness.

Daiki eyes him warily, unsure of what to expect. "Don't fucking move," he finally threatens, and he runs to Satsuki's side, keeping his arm directed at the boy, who this time doesn't turn his back on him. Wise boy.

He refuses to look at her face as he reaches for her pulse, not ready for any of it, he's not even sure he wants to know and—he feels it. The strong and a bit irregular beat of a heart.

He doesn't let the relief that washes over him at that moment strike him for long. He stands up again, feeling again the frustration and the confusion stronger than ever—he then settles for the anger. Anger is easy to handle, he finds, it sets in deep and fuels him with the strength he needs, obscuring everything else. He wants to tell 'Kuroko', that there is no 'of course', because he was personally going to kill his friend seconds before, and he is going to kill him now, fill his brain with bullets because this is what he does, and has done for a time longer that he can remember.

But Daiki watches those eyes, proud and certain, and Daiki desires to have that certainty for himself.

"What's with you?" he tries. "What's happening? Where do you two come from?"

The boy at first doesn't answer. He's looking at him, trying to decipher something or maybe just trying to burn a hole into his skull; for Daiki he's unfathomable as always.

"Was it Akashi?" he asks instead, and Daiki hates it when people answer with questions, but he's so shocked he can't protest.

The boy elaborates, "Akashi sent me and Kagami to kill you, today. Isn't it funny when a boss tries to get rid of three birds with one stone, making his men kill each other without them knowing they supposedly work on the same side?"

Daiki watches him struggling to put his friend on the seat of the motorcycle without a word.

When he finally gets on his seat too, he sends Daiki one last glance.

"You should start asking yourself what you are fighting for," he says, and then he drives off onto the street.

Again, Daiki doesn't shoot him.

(...)

"He said 'sorry'," Satsuki says at the Center, once they are left alone with the repairing robots.

"What?" Daiki asks distractedly, wincing as the robot touches his shoulder and dismantles parts of his arm. He glances at Satsuki, who is efficiently repairing herself, the electric device she holds scanning the damage of the metal plate that covers her left cheekbone and dictating procedures.

"The boy, " she elaborates. "I was going for the kill, when he hit me with his hand. He touched my head and said 'I'm sorry'. The odd thing is, he sounded like he meant it. Weird guy, huh."

Daiki doesn't comment, but raises his human hand to ruffle her hair.

(...)

The sixth time, he is downright furious.

"What the fuck are you doing here," he roars at Imayoshi's squad when they come out of fucking _everywhere_ in the middle of _his_ mission.

"Wanted to see with our eyes what you couldn't catch five times in a row," says Imayoshi, placid as ever even as he quickly loads his Submachine gun.

Daiki throws at him a challenging glare. "I thought I had made pretty clear the reasons why I couldn't catch him."

"Yeah, yeah," Imayoshi says, being his secretive self once again. "Still. Five times. Did you listen to my plan, Aomine?"

"Fuck you," Daiki says, running ahead of the squad and into the towering building Kuroko had entered. He has no time to spare now, he has to find him before the others and do _something_—kill him maybe, and then talk, or vice versa. Everything is so fucked up he just wants to grab something and reduce it to a million of pieces. Possibly Wakamatsu; maybe Kuroko.

He doesn't know what he's doing anymore as he runs up the stairway as fast as he can. The second door he comes across is crushed, hanging off its hinges, and Daiki is about to enter the apartment, when he thinks better of it.

He takes a risk and goes up to the next floor, finding the doors intact. At the fourth, another door is kicked open.

"Sly," he comments appreciatively, but then his ear catches an almost inaudible thump coming from upstairs, and Daiki is running again.

And there he is. At the fifth floor, Daiki almost misses the familiar glimpse of light-blue hair as Kuroko flees in an adjacent room in the apartment. Daiki is on him even before he can turn around.

His arm disassembles into a set of articulated mechanical claws and he traps the boy against the wall, Kuroko's feet dangling a few centimeters over the shabby carpet and his forearms conveniently impaled on Daiki's claws, far from being dangerous. They emit electric sparkles from their damage, and so does the side of the boy's neck and jaw, from which a weirdly textured fake skin is peeling off along the cuts. From his side, real blood trickles down.

Daiki is left speechless for a split second, when his arm pierces his hands and the boy's face scrunches up in seemingly _real_ physical pain; but that wouldn't have made any sense at all. Indeed, the boy is now so unexpressive and quiet that Daiki convinces himself he's imagined it.

"_What_ are you?" he growls, putting the mouth of the gun in his human hand on the middle of the boy's chest. "Why the fuck did you transform my life into a living hell?"

"Wasn't it hell already before me?" Kuroko dares to ask, simply as that. Daiki stumbles for a response for a moment, but quickly recovers, shaking his head with a painful grimace.

"You don't know anything," he spits out. "I'm done with this shit." And he steadies his armed hand.

But he can't pull the trigger.

He just can't and he doesn't know why he can't do it, with Kuroko watching him with owlish eyes that seem to bore their way to his soul and his body there, waiting for the inevitable—before he realizes it, he has already taken a choice.

"God knows how much I hate you," he says as he retracts his robot arm, dislodging some of the edges from the wall and causing some chips of lime to crumble down in dust. He briefly revels in the surprised face Kuroko makes before pathetically falling down on the floor like a sack.

Daiki closes his eyes, not before leveling the other with an eloquent look. "Stay _there_ one sec."

In the silence of the room, his ear implant picks out a chaotic thumping and smashing far too close for comfort.

"Fuck," he groans, and looks out of the nearest window. He checks the ground, and frowns at the agents crowding the back of the building. He then eyes the adjacent block critically, and judging it conveniently shorter. "Can you jump down from here?"

Kuroko stutters in confusion, before he finally catches up on what Daiki is implying.

"Yes," he says calmly, "but I probably wouldn't survive."

Daiki looks at him weirdly, "That means no."

"Then, no," Kuroko agrees diplomatically.

Daiki doesn't wait a second more, and lifts the boy up in his arms as his leg transforms in something more apt to a landing. He then prays that no agent will look at the sky in the next few seconds.

Kuroko only yelps briefly when he jumps a little clumsily out of the window and on the next roof. The landing luckily doesn't make that much noise over the general ruckus, even if some tiles are now cracked under his leg. Daiki reaches the opposite end of the roof, and takes another leap for the ground.

When he lets Kuroko descend to his feet again, he realizes the other's body radiates pretty much no warmth.

"Go," Daiki intimates him, "before they find you. I'll come up with something."

Kuroko takes a step away, but he doesn't go. "Thank you," he says, sounding very perplexed, as he rightly seems to always be in regard to Daiki's bipolar behavior.

Daiki splutters, looking away, before finding his coolness again. "Yeah, now go, before I change my mind and finally decide to put a bullet in your skull."

And Kuroko flees.

(...)

The seventh time, he's in the suburbs, on his way home, his latest purchases in his arms and his robot parts mostly hidden under a long sleeved, worn-out jacket – but he can't as easily conceal his metal hand too, so clients and cashiers kept sending wary glances at him, whispering behind his back and beckoning their friends to stay away, just to be sure, because cyborgs are always a bad sign—fucking hypocrites. Loving their robots swarming about in every street and even keeping their houses clean and safe and, still, shuddering at how scientific evolution could actually be used to really help people.

But he can't really blame them, in the deep of his heart: cyborgs _are_ usually a bad sign.

He sees the familiar silhouette leaning against the wall facing the market, wrapped in his black jacket, his skin back to being as smooth as ever. He looks at him wide-eyed, beckoning Daiki to come nearer. People walk by in the street without deigning to give him a glance.

"Can't let me rest in peace even while off duty?" he asks bitterly as he pulls back on the furry hood of his jacket, not in the mood for an encounter with Kuroko. His pride still cringes at the memory of Imayoshi's suspicious questions about Kuroko's last escape, Wakamatsu going on about his drastically dropping killing rate, and even _Sakurai_ looking at him untrustingly. It's not like it's Kuroko's fault more than his: he knew what was in store for him the moment he decided to help the boy. Still, he feels he isn't ready for any showdown; not with his mind still this confused, him and Satsuki under the lights of the division's attention, and most of all, not exiting a market with a bag of groceries in one hand and bottles of alcohol in the other.

"I wasn't on duty most of the times you tried to kill me," Kuroko replies, moving away from the wall.

"So what, are you here to kill _me_, this time? Because I tell you, you won't be able to," he warns him, towering over him and letting his hand buzz with life.

"Of course not," Kuroko answers, unaffected, watching his bag of alcohol with mild interest. "I suck at fighting, I would have died long ago if it wasn't for the tricky weaponry and you just playing around with me. I really hope you're not going to kill me, too." Kuroko gestures at the alcohol. "Are you throwing a party?"

"I…" Daiki starts to object, but stop, not knowing what to say anymore in front of Kuroko's sheer bluntness and unsettling easiness.

"We clearly need to talk, Aomine," Kuroko affirms, always expressionless. "Not here. Don't you live nearby?"

Daiki doesn't even bother to ask how he knows his name, or where he lives, and with a dejected sigh he starts walking home, Kuroko quietly in tow beside him.

As Daiki walks, his mind is bombarded by an intolerable amount of questions that beg to come out of his lips, making him edgy. So he starts talking, trying not to be weirded out by the idea of actually having a real, meaningful conversation with _Kuroko_.

"So, huh," he begins, tentatively, "Kuroko, right? They… repaired you."

"Kuroko Tetsuya." Kuroko raises his hands, contemplating them, "Yeah. They were really angry about it, though."

Daiki hasn't felt the warmth of a blush on his face in years, and when he does, he freaks out momentarily because flushing in shame is far from being acceptable, for him. He clears his throat to get his mind off of it. "And how's your friend?"

"He's… good, I guess," Kuroko says, in a vaguely disheartened voice what makes Daiki's stomach clench once again. He doesn't like the feeling one bit, so he easily switches to being irritated.

"Idiot," Daiki snorts loudly, "he'd better have escaped. Being your friend should have taught him some tricks."

"As you said, Kagami knows how to be an idiot best," Kuroko agrees lightly.

Despite the heavy air, Daiki finds himself chuckling.

Once they reach his apartment, going up a metal back ladder that brings them to a narrow landing, he struggles between the bags to get the key from his back pocket, and he opens the door to find the domestic robot accorded to him by the System vacuuming the living room. He orders it to go into the storage closet and not leave it until he says so, and waits for it to close the room's door behind itself before he addresses Kuroko again.

"I don't really trust those shining eyes," Daiki justifies his actions, entering his home and going to the kitchen to drop his bags on the counter.

Kuroko follows him, while nodding his approval with the tiniest smile. "You demonstrate more precaution than I would have given you credit for. Nice home, by the way."

"Nah, it sucks, it's small and dark and you can hear the neighbors on the next floor banging every fucking ni—Wait, what? What's that supposed to mean?" he asks offended. He rummages distractedly in the bag of alcohol, wondering if he'd better start drinking right now, but stops when Kuroko eyes him sharply.

"So," he croaks, resting against the counter and beckoning the other to sit on the kitchen table, "what is it you want to talk about?"

"About the System," Kuroko answers readily, coming in front of him but not sitting. "About Rakuzan overseeing everything and churning out cyborgs on a regular basis, and Akashi holding far more power than we want. I know Touou isn't a very central division and that the communication between the divisions has been kept very low. But even you surely have had the impression that something weird is happening around and into the System, with the rebels and everything."

"Yeah, I guess," he says. He started feeling a breeze of change months before, and it was Satsuki who had started to connect the pieces. He then had gone and done something really stupid which had put him and Satsuki in a very compromised position.

He is upset. He feels his fingers trembling, itching to clench and crash something between them, his nerves tingling with anticipation, his body edgy with the feeling that he's walking on a razor's edge, that he is finally at _the_ turning point, some sort of final comprehension now within the grasp of his hand—but he's not sure he wants it all. He isn't sure about anything, about Kuroko, about him feeling in the last weeks like he has started to wake up from a bloody dream where everything was easy, in a way, because he only had to follow orders, to go out, kill, wash away the blood, doing something useful for someone, somewhere—

"And after I understood what Akashi had tried to do, I thought I could trust you. But up until now, I'm the only one. Kagami doesn't really trust you that much."

"Ah, he… I… " he tries, but the words cling to his throat as if they had claws.

"It's okay, Aomine," Kuroko says to him, voice surprisingly soft. "It's okay. I mean, he was trying to kill you too."

"It's not…" Daiki wants to continue, but the words keep failing him. "It's not just about that. I mean, yes, but… It's something that happens… to me, and sometimes I just… I…"

"I think it's normal," Kuroko interjects when he understands Daiki can't speak anymore. "When everyone in our group started wondering about the purposes of the System, they inevitably relented in their activities. But they couldn't shake off the… feeling of the rush."

"What group," Daiki stops him, " what."

Kuroko sighs. "I'm sorry, Aomine, but first, you have to tell me your story."

Daiki stares at him, speechless. Then laughs at him a bit before settling for rage.

He snaps violently, pushing Kuroko hard against the edge of the large table, snarling at him and lowering his face to his level. "What the fuck do you want from me, Kuroko? You barge into my life unwanted, ruin it, and pretend I first tell you the story of my life, not even bothering to explain what I almost got my ass kicked off the division for? What is _wrong_ with you?!"

"I need you to tell me because if not, I can't help you!"

It's the first time Daiki hears the guy raise his voice notches over a murmur, and he can't help but stare at Kuroko's face as it slowly smooths from angry into an almost unperceivable sadness.

"I just want to help you," Kuroko says again, softer. Still trapped between Daiki's arms, he reaches out for the cybernetic arm with his right hand, and Daiki flinches away automatically. Kuroko stills his hand for a moment, before closing the gap and touching the cool metal. Daiki doesn't feel anything. "Please let me help you."

"Why didn't you kill me?" Daiki hisses, wanting to get a grip of his anger to keep it there with him, but it slowly gets dragged away by his frustration.

Kuroko looks at him thoroughly, trying to find something on his face, or maybe just trying to find something in himself.

"…Sometimes, sparing a life brings you more good than taking it would have," he says cryptically. "But that's not the right question. I know why I didn't kill you, and that's the relevant part. Do _you_ know why you didn't kill _me_?"

In that moment, something inside Daiki cracks. Under Kuroko's piercing eyes, he becomes suddenly aware of their proximity, of Kuroko's breath on his jaw, of his hand gently resting on his insensitive arm, and he doesn't know what compels him to do it, but he closes the gap between them and kisses Kuroko, hard, something more akin to raw need than want that takes hold of his body.

Kuroko flinches in surprise at it, but to Daiki's unspoken gratitude, he doesn't pull away. So Daiki coaxes his mouth open with his tongue, and Kuroko obliges, suddenly as eager as him, and Daiki wonders if he has dreamed of it, too, in the past weeks.

He hurriedly pulls Kuroko's jacket off his shoulders as he manages to shrug off his own, reaching then for the hem of the shirt. He bites lightly on Kuroko's lips before detaching himself for the shortest of moments in order to take the shirts off both of them. While they fall to the floor, Kuroko appraises his body with a dazed look, and then draws him in again, taking Daiki's face between his hands and kissing him open-mouthed.

Daiki runs his mismatched hands over every inch of the other's body as he listens to the soft sounds that roll of Kuroko's tongue right into his mouth.

He feels his trousers grow more uncomfortable by the second, and Kuroko's shortness is starting to make his back ache, so Daiki pulls him up by his ass over the table, Kuroko barely acknowledging this with a groan, and rejoices in the change of height by grinding his groin against the other's. Kuroko moans then something unintelligible that scarily resembles his name, and answers by thrusting his hips back, making Daiki clearly feel the pulsing of his own erection against his own through their clothes.

Daiki's arm flies beyond Kuroko's back, resting on the table and, in one swift movement, shoving the few things scattered on it on the floor in a loud crash, not caring one bit about the mess.

He pushes Kuroko down on the table's clear surface, and Kuroko brings Daiki down with him with his arm around Daiki's neck and his hand buried in Daiki's hair, his pale legs dangling around Daiki's sides.

Daiki sloppily leaves kisses on Kuroko's jaw, neck, and he licks the curve of his collarbone before starting to nip at the tender skin, his hands roaming over his smooth chest and further down, barely teasing.

It takes a long second for Daiki to understand the strange feeling he gets as he nips at Kuroko's neck, the skin not showing any sign of his ministrations there, except for the slick of his saliva. And when he does, he stops abruptly, bewildered, his eyes automatically searching for the tale-telling signs that show how Kuroko is more machine than human.

"Do you even feel any of this," he asks suddenly, unsure, as he spots on his chest and jaw the vague outlines of where the patches of fake skin connect to the real one.

"I do," Kuroko groans, his breath short and his pupils very dilated. "They did a very good job with me. Please, don't stop now."

And he thrusts his hips against Daiki's, making him forget every doubt. Just his clothed erection against the other's, Kuroko's hands on his back and scalp, pulling and scratching, and Daiki lets himself be pulled in.

Daiki's trousers are far too tight now, an almost painful constriction, and he stumbles to get his buttons free with one hand, as the other sustains him over Kuroko. When he finally manages, he disentangles himself from Kuroko's hold and brings pants and boxers down his hips in one move. In the meantime, he sees Kuroko's fingers work fast as light around his belt and zipper to get his erection free too.

Daiki doesn't feel like teasing, so he grabs Kuroko's erection and starts palming it quickly, and Kuroko's face as he does it is the best thing he's seen in a long time. He vaguely wonders if Kagami has got to see something that isn't Kuroko's expressionless face once in a while. If he has seen this one.

He leans over him, then, loving the feeling of that elusive body finally pinned under him, writhing and moaning under his ministrations. He brings their cocks together, and he takes them both in his human hand and gives them a test stroke.

He hardly manages to keep his eyes open when the wave of heat and pleasure hits him, to see Kuroko's closing in pleasure, his breath hitching and then releasing a soft groan from his parted lips – in that moment, he thinks he could never get tired of listening to Kuroko moaning his name.

He breathes in a mouthful of air before stroking their cocks again, and finding the rhythm in it.

Later he tells himself there wasn't a hint of desperation in the way he thrust himself in his hand and against Kuroko, mesmerized by Kuroko's eyes as they watched him in the haze of lust, as his mouth hovers over the other's and then descends on it, covering in forceful kisses Kuroko's lips and jaw.

His fingers brush against their heads, smearing them with precum, and then go back on pressing them together, almost too hard, Kuroko's strong hands clutching at his back like claws as Daiki brings him over the edge.

He buries his face in the crook of Kuroko's neck, inhaling his scent as he comes hard, white pleasure engulfing his vision behind his closed eyelids, everything stilling between them.

"Oh _god_, Tetsuya," Daiki moans, feeling his knee buckle under him as his body shudders from head to toe, and slumps down on Kuroko's chest, reveling in the sound of Kuroko's heart beating frantically.

Their breathing slowly returns to their regularity, and Daiki feels Kuroko squirm underneath him.

"Aomine, I can't breathe well," Kuoko says, after a while.

"Ah… yeah." He reluctantly pushes himself up and with some physical effort he pulls his pants back up. But he feels too hot to put the shirt too, so he drops to the ground and rests his back against the counter, watching silently as Kuroko stands up and grabs a tissue from the counter to clean himself, and Daiki's brain is conflicted between wanting another round of it all and the necessity of sorting all this out, the harshness of reality slowly sinking back in, drop by drop.

Kuroko then puts his pants on and plops down beside him.

The silence stretches on for a while, before Daiki has the courage to say anything.

"Do you have sex with everyone you want to help?"

Crooking his neck to the side, he sees Kuroko's lips barely curving up in a sly smile. "Not usually, no. Do you?"

Daiki shrugs his shoulders as he draws his knees closer and props his elbows on them. "I usually don't help anyone."

"That's not true. You helped me."

Daiki grins ruefully. "That was a spur of the moment." He hesitates a moment, wondering if he can ask and if Kuroko will answer him, but the question is out of his mouth before he knows it, "Do you regret it?"

Kuroko gives him a puzzled look. "What, doing this with you? Not really. It was good. Besides, I trust you."

"I wasn't talking about—why do you keep saying you trust me? How can you trust me that much, I could have killed you, I could still kill you without giving you the time to blink," Daiki says, almost whines, as if he's the one who needs to believe it.

"I had a weird feeling about you since the first time I saw you," Kuroko explains, ambiguous.

Daiki snorts, feeling slightly grated by Kuroko's attitude. "Yeah, tell me about it."

"Furthermore, I don't think pulling your cock out of your pants is the most efficient way to kill an enemy, unless of course you have a cyborg one," Kuroko says bluntly, and Daiki finds himself blushing for the second time that day. Not that Kuroko seems to notice, luckily.

"Just—shut up," Daiki whines weakly. He lets some seconds pass by before he tries again, "I meant if you regretted surviving."

Kuroko seems taken aback by the question, and doesn't answer right off, his wistful eyes lingering on the floor, but not really seeing anything. "I don't know," he finally says, his voice low. "I don't think so, not anymore. You see… there was a time when I first entered my division, when I wasn't like this. I mean, I was a cyborg, that's how I got in, that's how a lot of us get in, but I wasn't _this_ much. One arm, one leg, like you, and some other parts. I was loaded with weaponry too, and a pretty cool kind. But… a lot of things happened since then, and I got myself in a very dangerous position within the System, and Akashi did—"

He stops then, doubt crossing his face for a split second, before he continues, "One day, I almost got killed. I woke up in the operating room believing I _was_ dead, but they told me new robot parts had been implanted on me. And I couldn't feel anything. I mean, I felt the robots parts like you do, I know they're there and I have complete control over them, like my mind is linked to them even better than to my human limbs, but… I couldn't feel anything around me. The air, the touches, hot, cold, pleasure, pain. Even my breathing was weird. I felt bodiless, and monstrous. A killing machine."

"And I grew desperate to the point I begged some friends in the System who were working on a new level of cybernetics to make me more human. And they did, albeit facing lots of problems with everyone. They took out all the weaponry and only gave me this hand that releases an electromagnetic wave that hits the linked nerves and makes cyborgs go crazy with pain for some seconds, and a system that disables the receptors from the nerves when the pain reaches a certain level of intensity. I don't know, it's very complicated to me. What I know is that now I can feel, and look normal."

Daiki stares at him wide-eyed, utterly speechless. He would have never thought the little guy had it in him to blurt out such a long speech. But then again, probably everyone in the divisions has theirs closed in their hearts. He remembers to breathe at one point, but he can't manage to tear his eyes away from the other.

Kuroko then frowns at the floor, looking thoughtful. "But sometimes… sometimes I ask myself, what makes a person a human? What if one day my heart does collapse as they keep warning me about, and they put a robot one into my chest. Will I still be human? What's the core of a human, his heart? His brains? Your friend Satsuki has a little part of her brain sustained by robot parts, doesn't she? What does that make her?" He sighs heavily, tilting his head back. "When you are something like eighty percent a machine, you feel like you're there to touch the limit, but can't see it clearly. Sometimes I wonder, and I can't find an answer."

He then falls silent, and closes his eyes. But Daiki just can't stand the dejected look on his face.

"Well, with all this crappy insightful thinking, you seem very human to me," he tries, his voice gruff, and he looks away, in the attempt to conceal his awkwardness.

Kuroko's shoulders shake in what Daiki strongly suspects is a suppressed laughter, and he feels inexplicably lighter.

"That's probably true," Kuroko agrees, before glancing at him, serious again. "Will you tell me your story, Aomine?"

Daiki sighs, resigned. "Now, your annoying stubbornness somehow reminds me of Satsuki… What would you want to know from me?"

"Everything you're willing to tell me," Kuroko says. "How you got your implantation and entered the division, your days there, and most importantly, what you did to make Akashi want to get rid of you. I'll tell you mine, too, after that. You can kill me if I don't."

Daiki laughs. "There's no need to say that… Tetsu."

And under Kuroko's attentive gaze, sat beside him on the floor of his kitchen, Daiki begins to tell his story.

* * *

**I wanted to close everything with Kuroko shouting something along the lines of 'This is MY way of cyborgness!', but that sounded stupid so I cut it out.**

**I feel so sad when I don't manage to put the whole Generation of Miracles in a fic. Their absence makes everything more unreal lol.**  
**Anyway, in my head, the fic does make much more sense. And I am apparently not able to write something that doesn't sound more like a prequel than a oneshot, lately (and this fic, by the way, is meant to be a oneshot. A ONESHOT. I am so not thinking about prequelsandsequels-I am. Am I? Are people even interested in more of this?)**  
**And I'm sorry for the grand speech at the end. It sounded so forced haha, I came to the end and realized, 'THIS FIC DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE AT ALL let's just throw some vague explanation into it at the end', and I did. I'm sorry :C**


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